Direct manipulation operations have greatly assisted the ease of use of computers. Direct manipulation operations include such things as "dragging", in which all or part of a display group in a display space is moved in such a way that the group continuously follows the pointer as though it were attached thereto, and "dropping", in which the display group is added to another display group in the display space. Such drag and drop operations are used, for example, to drag a file to a printer and, upon dropping the file onto the printer, print the file. Similar operations are used to dispose of files, place a plurality of items into a single file, etc.
Although drag and drop operations are relatively simple in comparison to prior keyboard techniques, there is still some difficulty whenever more than one source item is required to be dropped onto a target. Similarly, whenever one or more source items must be dropped onto more than one target, the operations required may become lengthy and repetitive.
One attempted resolution to the problem of dragging multiple source items to a single target has involved the use of a special augmentation key. A specially designated key on the keyboard is first used and then, while holding the key, all the objects which are to be moved are designated with the mouse pointer. The special key is then released and any one of the designated objects is dragged and dropped onto the target. The movement of any one of the source objects to the target takes all the designated source objects with it. However, this method does not allow the ability to add to or delete from the source objects once the direct manipulation begins. Additionally, there is no way in the current methods to add to or delete from selected objects not in the currently active window. Also, there is no way in the current art to add to or delete objects from a target list. Thus, there is a need for a method and apparatus for allowing cross-window multiple source and target list manipulations.